They’ve done it. Representatives from the House and Senate have emerged from conference committee with a five-year transportation bill, which is expected to be quickly approved and become first “long-term” bill in more than a decade.

Streetsblog was unable to confirm that Congress will be using this as the cover for its new transportation bill.

The discouragingly-named “FAST Act” is 1,300 pages long, and everyone with a stake in the legislation is still having their policy wonks sort through it. But here’s a very broad outline: The $305 billion bill reserves $48 billion exclusively for transit and $205 billion for highways. While state DOTs do spend most of their “highway” money on highways, much of that money can be spent on surface streets or “flexed” to other modes if the agencies want. (Also, the bill lays out funding guidelines for passenger rail, but that will have to be meted out through a separate appropriations package.)

Stephen Lee Davis of Transportation for America says the bill mostly continues the transportation policy of the last 10 years. It contains small initial increases for both highways and transit and then raises them at the pace of inflation. The Transportation Alternatives Program — the small pool of funding for walking and biking — was the only program that was capped with no built-in adjustment for inflation. It will rise from the current $817 million annual allocation to $850 million and then be held constant.

“This bill essentially doubles down on [current policy] with some small changes, and it locks it in for 2020” Davis said.

Because no one in Washington is willing to raise the gax tax, the bill includes $70 billion in subsidies for the Highway Trust Fund from other sources. The subsidy could have been bigger, but late in the game, lawmakers backed off the idea of a six-year bill that would have reportedly cost $100 billion over and above what the gas tax brings in.

Here’s where the $70 billion comes from. The FAST Act taps “$53.3 billion from the surplus of the Federal Reserve bank and $6.9 billion [from] reducing the dividends that are paid to banks who are members of the Fed,” according to Keith Laing at The Hill. Laing reports that it also finds spare change under the couch in the form of customs fees ($5.2 billion), selling oil reserves ($6.2 billion), and savings from privatizing some IRS tax collections ($2.4 billion).

Transit advocates in big northeastern cities were watching an amendment that would have cost their transit agencies up to $1.6 billion over six years. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign reports that instead of being eliminated, the “High Density States Program” saw a marginal increase of $18 million — good news for transit agencies with some of the highest passenger volumes in the nation coping with unfunded maintenance obligations.

The bill also contains a small step forward on complete streets, according to Davis. It will require states and localities to consider the needs of all users in road design, under most conditions. But the measure lacks teeth.

We’ll be reporting more details about the bill and its implications as they become available.

It’s always a nailbiter every time the highway bill is up for renewal. Will they round up the 18.4 cent gas tax to 19 cents this time? How the hell will I be able to afford to drive? So relieved this is over and we can remain stuck in 1993 for four more years!

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Yesterday, U.S. DOT did something it hadn’t done for a decade: submit a surface transportation authorization bill to Congress. And what a bill it is. The $302 billion, four-year GROW AMERICA Act has several major reforms that would shift federal policy in a more multi-modal direction. One big change that we’ve noted before is that […]

Editor’s note: This year’s reauthorization of the federal transportation funding bill will be one of the most important opportunities in history for the nation’s advocates of livable streets, sustainable transportation and smart growth. But it’s going to be a complicated process. We’d like to demystify it for you, and to that end we’ll be featuring […]

Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee have been working to find $12 billion to fund the transportation bill for the next two years. All their proposals have met with rejection from the committee’s Republicans. Here’s why: The Republicans have been holding out for a funding mix that would include their favorite Christmas presents — oil […]

Congressmen Oberstar and Blumenauer, here speaking together at the 2007 Bike Summit, were on opposite sides of a dispute about increased funding for livability programs yesterday. Photo: Bike Portland The House of Representatives passed its 2011 appropriations bill for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development yesterday, significantly increasing the amount going to both highways and […]